Starting its Rs 30,000-crore disinvestment process for the current fiscal, the government today decided to offload four per cent stake in Hindustan Copper (HCL) through the offer for sale route on Friday.

"The sale will take place on the separate window of the stock exchanges and shall commence on November 23 at 9.15 am and shall close on the same day at 3.30 pm," HCL said in a filing to the BSE.

The pricing of the issue would be announced following the close of the market tomorrow. Shares of the company settled at Rs 239.20 apiece, down 3.86 per cent over the previous closing in the BSE.

The government would further dilute 5.59 per cent stake in the company in the second tranche to bring down its holding to 90 per cent.

"We don't want to flood the market with extra liquidity so we are divesting stakes in two tranches," Disinvestment Secretary Halim Khan said after a meeting of a Ministerial Panel to decided on the issue.

As per the company's BSE filing, 25 per cent of the 3.7 crore shares, representing four cent stake, would be reserved for allocation to mutual funds and insurance companies.

No single bidder other than mutual funds and insurance companies shall be allocated more than 25 per cent of the size of the sale," it added.

On September 14, the government had gave its nod for disinvestment of 9.59 per cent equity of the company through an offer for sale of shares through stock exchanges.